Paving The Way Into God’s Presence
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord.
I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.
Presence Of God Bible Verse
And they shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
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For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.
Paving The Way Into God’s Presence
In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.
Hebrews 8:10-13
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God says explicitly of Himself, “For I am the LORD, I change not” (Mai. 3:6). In other words, everything God does is in complete harmony with everything God does.
Even in the world of nature, we see examples of God’s harmonious working. David understood this when he wrote, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork” (Ps. 19:1).
God has put together this world of ours with great care, with each part relying upon another part.
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Therefore, when we approach the subject of coming into the presence of God, we must understand that there is nothing insignificant associated with it.
The importance of coming into God’s presence is seen in the meticulous planning that He put into it. We will find harmony and consistency all along the way into God’s presence.
Presence Of God Bible Verse
The way into God’s presence as recorded in the Old Testament was provisional until the time when the New Testament was revealed.
The Old Testament instructions were something like the scaffolding that goes up when erecting a building. When the building is completed, the scaffolding is removed.
The Old Testament law was the scaffolding that was provisional for the time until the New Testament revelation of Christ. When the anticipated new came, the old was no longer needed and was done away with.
In the Old Testament, we can start with Abraham’s altar,
move on to Moses’ Tabernacle in the wilderness, and then
Solomon’s Temple in all of its magnificence. We can follow
this progression with great delight, but we must realize it is
but scaffolding preparing the way for something greater. The
writer to the Hebrews tells us that Christ is that greater one.
Everything in the Old Testament moves us toward the prize, which is Christ, the fulfillment of every Old Testament promise. Each promise was a plank in the scaffolding, enabling God to bring us closer to His presence.
And once the destination was reached, the scaffolding was no longer needed. This backward look at the Old Testament covenant serves to heighten our appreciation of the New Testament revelation of Jesus Christ.
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And what a glorious revelation He is! To the question, “What hath God wrought?” we answer simply, Jesus Christ.
What the Old Covenant Reveals
To appreciate what the new covenant means to us as believers, we need to examine carefully the old Covenant. When we do, we will discover several things about it.
Let me make it clear that by “the law” I am not referring only to the Ten Commandments. That certainly was part of it, but it was given as part of a more comprehensive law.
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Which included sacrifice, the priesthood, and the altars—with the blood and the lambs and the beast and the bulls and goats. When we talk about the law, all of this is included.
As good as the Old Testament law was, and it was just and good in the best definition of those words, it had a weakness. The weakness of the Old Testament law had to do with its location.
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And by that, I mean everything about the Old Testament law had to do with the exterior and never the interior.
The Bible teaches that a man’s conduct and character spring from within him. “What cometh out of a man,” Jesus said, is what matters.
The weakness of the Old Testament law was that it could not deal with the life motivations of any person. It dealt mainly with the words: “thou shalt not” and “thou shalt.”
History has proven that you cannot change a man by legislating his actions. Only conduct can be legislated, but this never gets inside the man to affect his motivation.
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The old covenant was imperfect by its nature it, temporary in its continuance, and inadequate in its effect. In this sense, the old covenant pointed to something beyond itself.
What the New Covenant Implants
Throughout the Old Testament, God promised to provide an inward moral bent to holiness. He promised a new covenant to permanently replace the temporary old one.
And the writer of Hebrews argues, if you are going to get a new covenant, you make old and obsolete the old covenant.
What the old covenant could not do because of its weakness, the new covenant in Christ accomplished and continues to accomplish.
What this new covenant does is implant into the heart of a man a new nature, impelling him to act righteously. No longer is his conduct directed by an exterior law but by the law of Christ within him.
This was the promise buried deep within the old covenant. “But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD.
I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jer. 31:33).
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Therefore, there is something implanted in the heart of a man redeemed by the blood of Christ that impels him to do that which is right.
What I am talking about is the nature of the redeemed man. The Christian has instincts within not found in the unsaved man. I know that the words “nature” and “instinct” are in bad repute in some learned and extremely eggheaded circles.
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Although refusing to use such words, at least they are willing to say that there is something within a man, a “native” factor in behavior. That is, there is an intrinsic, internal factor in behavior in every person.
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This is clearly illustrated for us out in the world of nature. Back on the farm, we used to raise chickens. My mother always had a large flock of chickens to produce eggs for us.
She had what she called a “setting hen,” and looked forward to the time when all the chicks hatched. I always noticed as soon as one of those little chicks hatched from its egg it began acting like a chicken.
There was something within it causing it to behave in a certain way. No sooner were they out of their shell until they were out scratching in the dirt, even though they had never seen any chicken before them scratch.
They are scratched by some native factor leading them to do acts not dependent upon any previous experience. The mother hen did not teach the little chicks how to do that. It came to them naturally. They possessed the instinct of a chicken.
On the farm, my father raised hogs as well as chickens. The interesting thing about those pigs is that when they were born, they acted like pigs and never like a chickens, even though they lived on the same farm.
Both the chicken and the pig had in them what I will refer to as a “native factor” in behavior, making them act like themselves. A chicken will always act like a chicken, and a pig will always act like a pig.
It is this tendency to action that leads to an end. Whatever this is in animals, birds, fish, worms, and all the rest, it is that unknown factor that impels every creature to act like itself.
I grant you that this behavior can be altered by pressure from the outside. Go to any circus in town and you will find animals acting contrary to their nature.
You might see a little monkey in a suit with a red hat mimicking the mannerisms of a man. But he is still a monkey inside. You can alter him on the outside.
But you can in no way remove that unknown factor that impels him to act like himself. As soon as the little monkey gets by himself or with other monkeys, he will act like himself.
Temporarily, outside forces can persuade animals to act like something else, but when left to themselves, they automatically revert to their nature.
Of course, this has implications in the church. The church is notorious for using outside pressure to make a sinner act like a Christian. You can teach almost anybody to do almost anything.
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Baptize him, confirm him, and feed him the Lord’s Supper regularly; instruct him in the faith, and after a while, he begins to act like a Christian.
He is not a Christian because there is not that inward factor impelling him to righteousness and true holiness.
Outside pressure is making him conform and act like a Christian. However, when he is away from that pressure, he reverts to acting like himself—a sinner. His instinct is always toward sin.
To make this clear, let’s look at two extremes. Take the first archangel in Isaac Watts’s hymn “Eternal Power, Whose High Abode”:
While the first archangel sings, He hides his face behind his wings, And ranks of shining thrones around Fall worshipping, and spreads the ground.
Compare that first archangel to that old devil, which is called the “Dragon” and “Satan.”
It would be difficult to find two creatures as far apart morally as these two. Both have an unknown factor within telling them to act like themselves. The archangel instinctively acts like an archangel, and Satan always acts like himself.
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The only thing I can say in Satan’s favor is that he always acts like himself. When he is deceiving, he is acting like the devil; he is acting like himself.
Remember what Jesus said about certain Jews who were persecuting Him: ‘Ye are of your father the devil, and the lust of your father ye will do” (John 8:44).
When the archangel is acting like an archangel, he is not acting because he has been trained to do so. He is acting from the inside. Something within him makes him act like an archangel, and he does not resist.
He desires to do it just like the little chick does not resist the temptation to scratch; it scratches because something inside of it is impelling it to scratch.
So the archangel is not comparing himself with someone else and saying, “I’ve got to act like an archangel.”
He acts like an archangel because he is an archangel. This brings up the old question the Church has debated from time immemorial. Does a sinner sin because he is a sinner, or is he a sinner because he sins? Well, both are correct.
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We can go around the theological circle until by the grace of God we break out of that and we are a sinner no longer. Therefore, the sinner sins, but he sins because he has been a sinner. When he sins, he is simply acting like himself.
The crowning achievement of the New Testament is to implant in the heart of a believing man an unknown factor that impels him to act righteously and holy.
Birth Trumps Training
The question I want you to consider is simply this: Which is more important, the birth or the training? I suggested what training can do and what it cannot do. And so the matter comes down to this: the nature we have is the one we were born with.
Training can go so far, but birth, especially the new birth, establishes the true nature. This is the difference between what I will call “denominational Christianity” and true Christianity.
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We are training people every week to be good church people. But when left to themselves, they will revert to their real nature and act like themselves.
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They have been trained to act like a good Christian on Sunday, but it is only an act. The rest of the week they act like themselves, naturally.
People sang the songs of Israel without being Israelites. And people today can sing the songs of the Church without being truly Christians. Because once the song is over the true nature within takes over.
You say, “What right have you, in this bigoted manner, to rule men out of the Church?” I do not have any right to do anything at all.
But under the grace of God and by the authority granted me by the Lord Jesus Christ, I do have this commission: to draw the line between him that serveth God and him that serveth Him not.
And I dare to stand and say in His name that unless a man is born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. And no amount of training or religious accent we put on will ever do.
Something has to change within every person. We call it the new birth. We call it the regeneration. No matter what we call it, there has to be implanted in the human spirit that which impels righteous conduct.
You need to be regenerated because you were generated wrong in the first place. That “unknown factor”—God calls it “My law.”
He said, “I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people” (Heb. 8:10). That is where we get it.
A Christian has had the laws of God inscribed in his heart at the motivational center of his life. That is a Christian. Nothing else qualifies.
With this new birth, this regeneration comes an instinct that does not need exterior pressure to act.
Deliverance From The Wild Factor
In our church, we once had a carpenter newly converted to Christ. One day when he was on the job, pounding away.
He missed the nail, hit his thumb, and let out a yell; that old language that would have curled the hair of an archangel filled the air.
He surprised everybody by not falling on his knees and confessing his sin. He simply smiled and said, “Glory to God.”
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For some people, it sounded a little confusing, but it is not at all. For my recently converted carpenter friend, it suddenly occurred to him that his old way was gone.
Sure, his swear words jumped to his lips, but they were simply a reflex. They were his old habit, and he had fallen into it for a second. God, however, knew he did not mean it.
Instead of getting all bent out of shape, spiritually speaking, he praised God that he had been delivered from that old life. The reflex was there, but something deeper was replacing that.
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Sometimes it takes a while, but my carpenter friend knew there was a time in his life when he would have cursed a blue streak without any kind of thought behind it. Now things were different.
The new birth changes things within. Sometimes it takes a while for it all to work outward. The apostle Paul understood this perfectly when he wrote, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12).
The essential purpose of the new birth is to defeat and destroy within the human heart the old nature, or the wild factor.
Seeking God’s Presence Daily
Our deliverance from this wild factor is from within and not from merely trying to contain it and control it with outside pressure.
The New Testament teaches the presence of conflicting factors in the Christian’s life. There are conflicting factors that sometimes overcome him: weakness of the flesh and the influence of the world; lust and old habits.
In the seventh chapter of Romans is a classic way of a holy man who sometimes felt a factor stirring within him that impelled him to be unholy, and he cried.
“O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24).
He went on in the eighth chapter to show the provision made toward deliverance from these wild factors that lie in us, factors we call “the flesh” or “carnality” or “the old man.” There are a dozen names given to this.
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Thank God, we can have complete deliverance from the old nature and the old instincts and that old way of life. Behold, the new nature cometh!
What Is Of Man And What Is Of God
In the book of Hebrews, we read, “And they shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more” (Heb. 8:11-12). The question is, can religion be taught?
I want everybody to know that I certainly do believe in religious education if we understand what is meant by it.
I believe it is important that doctrine and ethics be taught. I think our children should be taught in the Sunday School the things of God—the Scripture and what the Bible teaches.
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All of this is good and should be done. Our children need to be taught what the Bible says “Obey your parents, do not lie, and do not steal.” There are many things that we can teach our children.
But the serious error facing the church today is its belief that salvation can be taught. Set a person down or a group of people and teach them what the Bible says and ask them if they believe it and if they accept it and so forth.
When everybody nods their head in the affirmative, we lead them into believing that they have now been born again.
What we must teach is that salvation happens in a man’s life because he believes that doctrine that he has heard.
Anybody can pass a test and recite the catechism from the first or the last, letter perfectly, and still not be a Christian.
It is impossible to make a person a Christian by teaching. However, you can compel him to want to be a Christian. You can show him how to be a Christian.
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And when he has become a Christian, you can teach him, as Jesus said, “These things have I spoken unto you” (John 14:25). But you cannot make him a Christian by teaching him.
Life cannot be created by the act of teaching. Nobody yet has ever come up with a curriculum that could bring a baby into the world.
Babies are born out of life. But after that baby is born, you can begin teaching him and eventually send him away to college, and he can learn what he needs to learn. But the crucial thing is that you have to start with life.
What I often ponder is how many Christians are there who are Christians only by instruction, religious education, or having somebody manipulate them by dunking them in a baptismal pool or sprinkling water on them.
How many of these people come to church every Sunday, take part in the services on Sunday, and yet are not known for being Christians?
Because away from the church they do not act like a Christian? They are Christians by assumption, manipulation, or instruction, rather than by regeneration.
Salvation implants within the human heart an unknown factor in helping that person to holiness. The true Christian cries out to the Father by the impulse of the Holy Spirit and does not ask to be taught.
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Nobody says to this new Christian, “Repeat after me, Abba Father’.” He says “Abba Father” because the Spirit of the Son, in his heart, is telling him to say it.
Here is where we need to understand what is of man and what is truly of God. What is of man uses manipulation, outside pressure, and instruction to make a person do what he should be doing.
But what is of God uses the implantation of a new nature within the heart of a person, causing him instinctively to live like a Christian. Causing him to naturally follow after righteousness and true holiness.
Springing up within the heart of this new nature is an aspiration to know God and experience His presence in everyday living. The anonymous writer of the book The Cloud of Unknowing emphasizes this truth.
He says, “Man’s highest perfection is union with God in consummate love, a destiny so high, and so pure in itself, and so far from human thought that it cannot be known or imagined as it is.”
The way into God’s presence has been paved for us, beginning with the Old Testament. The Old Testament never promises anything that the New Testament does not deliver on.
And so the purpose of the Old Testament is to guide us into the truth of who Jesus Christ is.
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Looking back over the past, beginning back to the Garden of Eden, we will discover that God spared no pains in laying out for us this pathway.
The purpose of God from the very beginning of creation is fulfilled in the regenerated heart of every believer who now can enjoy the manifest.
Conscious presence of the living God. The way into God’s presence is the delight of the redeemed. It is where he belongs, naturally.
A Glory Gilds the Sacred Page by William Coujper (1731-1800)
A glory gilds the sacred page,
Majestic like the sun;
It gives a light to every age,
It gives but borrows none.
The hand that gave it still supplies
The gracious light and heat:
His truths upon the nations rise;
They rise but never set.
Let everlasting thanks be thine
For such a bright display,
As makes a world of darkness shine
With beams of heavenly day.
My soul rejoices to pursue
The steps of him I love,
Till glory break upon my view
In brighter worlds above.